


And I'll Take Your Blame

by Maker_of_Rune_Vests



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War (2018) Non-Compliant, Brotherhood, F/M, Loki (Marvel) Feels, POV First Person, POV Loki (Marvel), POV Second Person, POV Third Person, POV Thor, POV reader, Reader-Insert, Thor (Marvel) Feels, Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Compliant, Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Post Credits Scene Non-Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-07 14:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14672592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maker_of_Rune_Vests/pseuds/Maker_of_Rune_Vests
Summary: In which Thor gets arrested, Loki is a hero in a peculiar manner, and you are Loki's historian wife and have the great and alarming privilege of watching Asgardian Family Drama and Extra-Familial Chaos.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My playlist for this story: https://open.spotify.com/user/absentmindedasgardian/playlist/3AJ694mdYQuQmCf2tSc7Zo?si=wAnyMfKpTYuF52lxaNsJ-A

_You_  
  
    The snowy mountains of Jotunheimen National Park most certainly have not always had a large airship sitting a third of the way up one of them, but the airship is so derelict and the snow so heavy that it looks as if they have. You note, as you look back at the Ark, that it is slanted again, and debate with yourself whether or not to say anything about it. The last time you had the effect was that Thor and half the warriors in New Asgard had had far too much fun blasting part of the next mountain into boulders that the Hulk could wedge under it for stability.  
    There they are, driving up through the year-old village that was growing down the mountain from the Ark, a battered red truck with lightning marks on it. It swerves and bounces, and brakes far too hard, and a moment later the door flies open and Thor climbs out, slamming it behind him. He usually is gentler with that truck; he’s loved it ever since its makers gave it to him in exchange for letting them make billboards of him driving it in the armor Loki’s illusion of a black suit now uncovers as it vanishes.  
    Loki’s vanishes also as he softly closes the other door behind him, but the frowns do not leave either of their faces until five children run up, squeaking, “Allfather! Allfather! Show us why it’s a pickup! Show us why!”  
    Thor reaches under the pickup with a grin and lifts it into the air, snow falling from its tires, and the children squeal. Loki smiles slightly and turns to you, taking your hand and lightly kissing it. He never greets you informally if anybody else is in your vicinity. “He nearly wrecked twice,” he says under his breath, and you have to keep a straight face. Thor is not a good driver, but he has never been in a serious accident and so your husband's abhorrence of his driving is amusing. But today it’s too easy to stay serious.  
    You need not even ask whether or not your people will be allowed to stay. The answer is clear in their faces and in the lack of good news announced. Today was the day of the ultimate decision, and the mortals have deemed the gods unworthy to live unified on a piece of mountain Midgardians were scarcely using at all.  
    That fact and everyone’s feelings thereon are recounted louder and louder with less and less organization at the great outdoor meeting that night, lit by the bonfires that are to keep everyone from freezing. Babies are there, wrapped in three or four woolen blankets, and those who are five thousand are there too, just as wrapped up, the calmest of the crowd.  
    Loki stands like a dark-clad statue, underdressed for the cold he does not feel, and you stand beside him, gloved hands holding your cloak tightly around you. The crowd is not watching you, or him, or Valkyrie with her ever-longer dark braids, or Heimdall with his golden eyes glowing in the bonfire-light, or even the Hulk whose vastness and hue still draw attention even now that everyone has had a year to become used to them. Everyone is watching Thor, the king, talking to him, and then when he steps forward into the light of one of the bonfires and raises his hand, listening.      
    “The Midgardian rulers say we cannot live here in their park,” he says. “They say that no country is willing to accept all of us, but that if we cooperate homes will be found for all. America is willing to accept a number of us. Norway will allow some to stay, and Germany will allow others in. England has offered to take some as well. We will be guaranteed some form of accommodation and a path to citizenship, and families will be allowed to stay together.”  
    Nobody looks grateful or pleased. You are a people, you belong together, you are hurting nobody living in these mountains hunting reindeer and trying to make little gardens and seeking work where you can find it.  
    “And if we do not accept this?” a woman asks loudly from the crowd.  
    Thor looks at Loki, who steps forward. “They will attempt to force us to depart. I engaged one of the diplomats in conversation, under the guise of one of his countrymen, and verified that they will use the police and even the military against us.”  
    “Hulk destroy them!” Hulk interjects, and the crowd bursts out cheering for him.  
    Loki sighs and steps back beside you.He has told you that he knows that Thor, against his advice, is intending to let the crowd choose.  
    Thor runs a hand through his hair, finally beginning to be long again after it was shorn when he was enthralled before Ragnarok. “Asgardians!” he says, and the cheering stops. “You have known it might come to this for months. You have had time to think. The choice is yours, to leave in peace or to dare Midgard to fight us. I will choose what you choose. Who is for the former?”  
      Your hand goes up, and Loki’s, and Heimdall’s, and those of a dozen or two dozen in the crowd, and that is it. Thor waits long enough for you to hear the silence, hear one shout of “Cowards!” hear Loki breathing faster than he ought to be.  
    “And who is for the latter? Even knowing that many of us may be killed?” Thor asks, and with shouts every right hand that was down goes up, even the hand of a little blonde girl who is standing towards the front of the crowd and holding a doll in the other. Valkyrie pumps her fist up with a fierce shout, and Hulk throws both green fists into the air and then pounds them on his chest, bellowing.  
    Thor bends his head for a moment, and then speaks above the shouts. “I have seen and accept your choice. We will not be moved.”  
    And cheers, and cheers, and cheers, and you wonder if you are crying or if the cold is making your eyes water. 


	2. Chapter 2

_Loki_

  
    Forgetting the objective of making a peaceful stand in their certainty that such a stand will lead to war—they are consumed by old Asgard’s glory and transformed into so many torches burning to ash the hopes of New Asgard.      
          I turn and walk up the mountain, over frozen stone and frozen snow. Until the people’s voices have faded enough that I can hear the icy crust of the snow punched through at every step, I halt not. They are such fools.  
    You knew how they would vote, Brother.  You knew that they would be planning battle before their resistance had even been challenged.  
    Steps behind me, and the darkness looks softer. I turn and see my wife stepping from one of my footprints to another, cloak held tightly around her. It must be cold indeed tonight.   
    I walk down the slope to her, and take her into my arms. “It’s too cold for you away from the bonfires.”  
    “Then come back with me,” she says. There’s snow dusted across half her face and into her hair, as if she tried to brush the latter back with a snowy glove. “Or come inside. They’ve started drinking, and Valkyrie’s challenging all comers.”  
    “That sounds terrible,” I say dryly. “The only way it could be worse is if—“  
    “The Hulk accepted the challenge. He did,” she finishes, mouth quirking, and despite expecting a miniature Ragnarok within the next few days, I laugh and kiss her ice-sprinkled forehead.  
    “Inside, incontrovertibly.”   
    The ark soon rises dark before us, unfueled, engine broken, too small to fit the animals we have bought and the crops we have raised—and the people would not fly again, even if it were twice as large and functioning as well as the day I captained it. It’s merely a substitute for a palace now.   
    In our room, I help her remove her wet cape and snowy gloves. She shivers and walks to the brazier, holding her hands over it. They block part of the light that would have lit her face, making her half visible beauty and half shadow. “The last night on which we can be sure of peace,” she muses, looking into the flames, and turns suddenly. “I should enter that meeting in the Annals of Asgard before I forget any detail of it. You’ll remind me of the exact wording of everything?”  
    “As always,” I reply, pulling the chair away from her desk for her. I’m a useful husband for the realm’s only surviving historian—perfect memory.  
    This could indeed be the last night in which I’ll stand behind her chair and watch her  letters rush across the paper with an accuracy in their meaning they couldn’t dare to dream of in their form. She tells what happened, and says not a word of what she thought of it; a fine annalist. Yet even her simple statement of the vote and the merriment so brings the thought before me that Asgard has given up a separated life for a unified death that I scarcely notice that she has stopped writing and is rebinding cord around the hundreds of sheets.  
    She twists to look up at me, one of her hands holding the back of her chair. “What will we do, my love? If everything goes awry?”  
    “You will stay out of danger,” I say, touching the back of her hand. “And disregard the lure of watching history.”  
    “And you?”  
    I shrug. “I’ll tell you, once I know.”  
    That certainly didn’t make her feel better. But had I said, “Quite possibly I’ll die again”…not something one can say to one’s wife. She’s looking up at me with worried eyes; her warm, ink-stained fingers release the chair to catch hold of my hand. Such a short felicity. Three months in which she asked me questions as she wiled away our flight by re-writing her lost Annals; three more, of questions becoming irrelevant to annals and every blot of ink I saw reminding me of her; and six, with her mine, her love and devotion divided only with history.  
    I bend and lift her into my arms, where she belongs, and kiss her soft lips. “Tonight is peaceful.”


	3. Chapter 3

_Thor_  
  
    Midgardian governments were as slow as bilgesnipes trying to run in winter. But eventually, the formal order came to leave; eventually, it was repeated; eventually, one muddy day that was thinking of being spring, Midgardian soldiers clad in uniforms spotted with the brown of mud and the green of dead grass marched through slushy snow towards the village.  
    Thor walked to meet them, past Asgardian after Asgardian standing, standing still, but with weapons in their hands and armor last worn in Ragnarok or crafted in New Asgard and never worn before protecting their hearts and limbs. They bowed as he passed, bowed as they had ceased doing in this new world. But the new world had not received them, and so they would live now as they had in the old, and die as they would have there.  
    If it came to that. Thor had told everyone not to fight, only to stand their ground. He was intending to negotiate, hence why he had Heimdall walking with him rather than Valkyrie the war hawk or Loki the outlaw or Hulk the lawless.  
    But war drums were beating in his head, and lightning was flashing in his eye, and he felt alive and powerful as he had not felt since the last time he had been God of Thunder. In his mind he was for peace; his soul wanted war, and the soldiers, every one of them, faltered as he came into sight.  
    Perhaps their faltering inspired her. Perhaps she wanted to start a war. More likely, she was extremely intoxicated.  
    Valkyrie’s voice came from behind Thor, loud, clear, and rude, telling the soldiers to do something that even Thor would have been too mannerly to say. “And get out of here before I kill you all!”  
    Their guns all swung towards her—and before demands could be made, before Thor could tell her not to battle, before anything could happen except for one shout, simultaneous, from Heimdall and from Thor—“Stop!”—she leapt towards them and slashed the legs off one of them with a single sweep of Dragonfang. Their bullets ricocheted from her armor as she screamed,  slashing and slashing.  
    Thor and Heimdall were running towards the battle, shouting for her to stop, to stop, to stop. People were running too. They had seen, and they wanted war.  
    They were not wearing noble armor. The bullets that sprayed and ricocheted from Valkyrie, that no sooner touched Thor’s or Heimdall’s armor than they ran away again back into the air, rent them in pieces.  
    And Thor, lightning already in his eye and around his hand, so close to the soldiers that he could see the slush on their boots, saw a little boy avoid the bullets—they were above his head; he was very young—and run straight towards the soldiers with a little knife in his hand—and saw a soldier turn his gun towards the child and shoot him, so that he fell in the slushy snow and his small hand let go of the knife.  
    The cry of “Stop!” Thor was in the midst of shouting turned into a battle yell, and lightning lit up his eyes.  
    Into the sky he leapt.  
    Down from the sky he fell.  
    Valkyrie threw herself down the hill to safety as he and his lightning dropped into the center of the soldiers.   
    They fell into the snow, black uniforms becoming black smoke.  
    And the God of Thunder shouted as Odin and Bor had shouted in victory.


	4. Chapter 4

_You_  
  
    Standing on the top of a ship on the peak of a mountain lets you see broadly the saga of New Asgard turn from an adventure song to a death dirge. Even as you sobbed as the shots and the thunder tapped and growled in the cool wind, even as the women and children around you screamed and cried and wanted to rush out, even as they cheered hysterically at your brother-in-law’s bright unwise lightning, you noticed, you made sure you noticed. All of this must be written down and remembered.  
    But you only notice that Loki has left the place where he stood like a statue beside you, bound to that spot by Thor’s orders, when you see his green cape billowing behind him as he runs away from the ship towards the last bits of lightning. He vanishes into the fog and smoke of lightning meeting bodies and snow, and you clench your hands together. You can’t see him, or anything, now. Fog and snow, smoke, clouds, a mist unrelated to the battle coming in….  
    It doesn’t stop you from seeing the vast Midgardian war vehicles roll in, or from seeing the flashes of light amid the fog as they fire. You draw in your breath, staring wide-eyed at hidden horrors, and cough on smoke so hard that the pain makes you press your palm against your side.   
    You have duties. As you stop coughing you again notice the panic around you, panic that for a moment you were too panicked to be concerned by. “We need to get the children inside, there’s too much smoke in the air,” you say, and mothers begin obeying you. You’re the only leader they have, at this moment. Maybe the only one.  
    No. No. No.   
    You linger on the roof after they have all gone down inside, squinting as if squinting could clarify smoke and mist. The air feels like ashes look.   
    Loki’s voice, behind you, says your name, and you turn and more or less throw yourself at him, thinking of nothing for a moment except that he’s safe. He catches you and holds you against him with one arm, speaking quickly. “We must leave. Now.”  
    “Leave?” His other arm is hurt; he’s holding it as if it cannot bend, and his leather sleeve is coated with blood. “I’ll—I need to bandage that—“  
    “Thor surrendered.” The emphasis in his voice gets your attention away even from his wound. “The people will not be harmed. I stayed long enough to be sure that is true. We must leave. Now.”  
    He releases you and strides toward the Commodore, which is still perched on the Ark like a rotund bird on a nest, and you follow him, numb and confused, and horrified by the thin trail of blood he’s leaving—a badly written, never ending sentence in red ink.


	5. Chapter 5

_Loki_  
      
    We curve up as sharply as a bird lifts from the ground, slicing up through smoke and thunderclouds into sky the color of shadows on snow. Safety from Asgard’s fate. Severance from its fortunes.  
    I’m clearly a better pilot than he is.  
    “What happened?” Somehow my wife has already found cloth to bandage my arm, and I hold it out as she wants me to, steering one-handed and thinking absently of the spells needed to make that sleeve vanish out of her way.  
     _His lightning was brighter than the battle smog could hide and his roars of rage louder than the guns so unearthly fast or the screams. I stumbled over someone as I ran to him. She grabbed my cape with a strong, bloody hand. The Valkyrie. Blood on her throat, on her stomach, soaking her braids. “Tell him—tell him to surrender! It’s not his time for Valhalla.”_  
_I nodded and was mute, for it’s not my habit to speak acerbic words to those I think are dying._  
_So many of my people were dying. I saw the man who was Odin, in my tragedy. He was missing more than an eye. His entire head, actually…._  
_I reached Thor a moment later, dodging lightning, and he looked at me.“I told you to stay at the Ark!”_  
_“Well, obviously someone needed to tell you not to die!”_  
_He shakes his head with a resigned—Thor is not resigned, never resigned— solemnity that stiffens my lungs and pains my heart.“Valhalla awaits us. There is no other world that wants us.”_  
_“But this world would let you live!” I shout, and light shoots from the ground like a Bifrost rising rather than descending, sending stones flying towards us. I throw myself at Thor, knocking him to the ground and under the arc of the stones. Under most of them. I hiss as one smashes into my elbow, the pain turning my voice into a snarl. “And let our people live! If you surrender!”_  
    “I told you. I convinced him to surrender.”  
    “What will happen?” she asks, with more interest and concern than fear. My dear one. You’re already planning how you’ll record this.  
    “He’ll be tried as a terrorist,” I say crisply. “Our people will live, though I do not know where they will be sent. And we…must decide to what realm we’re flying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler: Valkyrie is not dead.


	6. Chapter 6

_Thor_  
          
    The Asgardians were still in Norway, and had large crowds of Midgardians holding rallies for them to be allowed to stay there. Valkyrie was alive and would be tried too. Steve Rogers was urging an investigation into the Norwegian government’s actions, and joining the rallies.   
    Thor had been in prison for a month. He knew the news because his lawyers told it to him. It was the only thing they knew how to do, in this case.   
    Today he paced in his cell, missing the familiar feeling of the floor trembling under his heavy steps. This floor was grey, invulnerable, unshakable concrete, like the walls. Beneath his hair, grown out just enough that part of it was trying to flow and the other part was still standing up in an insecure sort of way, his face was paler than it had been for years.  
    He blamed himself for Asgardian deaths, and for Midgardian ones. If Mjolnir had been sitting on the floor beside his cot, he would not have tried to lift it.   
    A low voice shifted the silence into sound. “Incarceration doesn’t suit you, brother.”  
     Thor turned quickly, straightening. “Loki! What are you doing here?”  
    Loki smiled and shrugged, the heavy fur collar of his cape puffing up around his jaw. “I forgot that one shouldn’t visit family who are in prison.” He scrutinized Thor.“And you’ve been forgetting to eat and sleep.”  
    Thor was certain that he was an illusion, but he still walked closer to him, close enough to see the worry lines between his brows and the blue-purple under his eyes. “Where are you, brother?”  
    “In safety. I did not think that Midgardians would have mercy on their would-be ruler.” Loki smiled, laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. “Your trial starts tomorrow; be prepared to vanish, before the eyes of as many reporters as possible.” He shook his head, flipping black curls away from his eyes, and examined Thor’s expression. “You think me incapable of causing that.”  
    Thor shook his head. “No, but it will not do. I cannot escape; if I escape, our people will still be kingless. I must be cleared in court.”   
    Loki’s smile vanished. “You are visibly, undeniably guilty—by their law—and you will indubitably be condemned.”   
    “I fought those who harmed our people. They will realize that that is what a king has to do.”   
    Loki sighed, and began to pace back and forth, making no footfalls. “They would have, half a millennium ago. But this world delights in its chimera of lawfulness.”   
    Thor knew that he would not be acquitted, and he knew that he must be acquitted. He sat down on his bed, too short and too narrow for him, head bent as if he’d just paused from exhausting work. It was strange to see Loki pacing and not hear him; and then he discovered that he could not see him either. The illusion of him had dissipated. 


	7. Chapter 7

_You_  
  
    You were able to go over and amend the entire last chapter of your chronicle before Loki returned from his walk, despite your being a careful reviser. He seemed to be on walks all the time, sometimes in disguise for supplies, but usually just to walk though the Arctic. He had decided not to leave Midgard yet.  
    He is thinking, you suppose. He is troubled, you know, and you are also. You put your annals into a cold metal drawer and walk into the front of the ship, where you kneel on the pilot’s seat and rub your hand across cold fogged window to make a clear swipe of darkness into which you can stare.  
    Behind you a door swings open, hinges squeaking, and you draw in your breath and twist around to see who—oh, he’s home at last! You slide off the seat and hurry to meet him.  
    Long absences or short, you always like to hug him when he reappears. But after such a long time gone, you all but throw yourself into his arms. He’s as cold as the air outside, close enough that it hurts a little to rest your cheek against his leather tunic, cold enough that you shiver when he puts his frigid hand on your lower back as he bends his head to kiss your brow. “You were gone for hours,” you say softly.  
    “I did not realize how far I had walked.” He sounds certain now; before the walk he sounded dubious. You know that he has decided what to do, how to save Thor. But you do not ask yet. You are afraid to.  
    You unclasp his snowy cloak and take it, heavy and trying to trip you, to where there is a hook you can hang it from to thaw.  
    Loki sits down on the bed you’ve tucked into a corner of the ship, and you sit beside him, and then change your mind and lie down with your head on his lap. He looks down at you fondly and brushes hair back from your face. “You look as if you might fall asleep at any moment.”  
    You shake your head. “Not yet, my love.” His hand caresses your side and rests firm and close at your waist, his arm across you.   
    “I have a plan,” he says. “It will be quite effective.” He sounds as if he is saying that it will be a catastrophe.


	8. Chapter 8

_Loki_

[Redacted for suspense.]


	9. Chapter 9

_Thor_  
    

    Not guilty. Thor intended to say “Not guilty,” for his lawyer had decided to argue that the Battle of Jotunheimen National Park was self-defense. He looked at the judge in the eyes, hands unfisted, shoulders back, conscience confident that at least by the law of Asgard his answer was true—and said nothing.  
    For someone else had perfectly, loudly, and dramatically enunciated “Guilty!”  
    One of the jurors had stood up and said it, and the other jurors and Thor and the judge and the lawyers and the witnesses heeded that he was very tall and very sharp-boned and that black curls waved over the shoulders of his designer black suit.  
    “That is a clear example of bias and—“ The judge stopped short as the juror left the witness box and strode towards him. The black suit melted, green shining-edged, and disclosed black leather. Green light arced up from his head and left golden horns; flowed from his back and left a green cape.   
    “Brother, what—“ Loki looked at Thor and smiled. Half of those present said it was an affectionate smile when they were interviewed by journalists. The other half said it was snide. Nobody said that they had not noticed it.   
    Loki put his finger to his lips. “Shh,” he said, and looked at the judge again, hand falling to scratch at the palm of his other hand. “I plead guilty!”  
    Everyone heard the pens drop.   
    “So surprised, mortals?” A wide grin spread across Loki’s face. “I put them all under my magic! The God of Thunder! The Valkyrie! Every noble and every peasant who slaughtered you and whom you slaughtered fought only because it was my whim that they battle and my spells in their hearts.”  
    “You’re lying!” Thor shouted, shoving a guard out of the way and heading towards Loki. “You told me not to fight. You voted against it!” Loki smiled, stepping forward too and putting his hand on Thor’s shoulder. “You told me to surrender,” Thor finished.   
    Loki’s smile and the silence in the courtroom matched each other in unnatural greatness. “All a play, brother,” he said. “I played with lives and I have played with memories.”  
    The silence in the courtroom broke and turned into the sounds of realization.  
    Thor’s realization was silent, but his statement of it was loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.  “You’re doing this for Asgard, sacrificing yourself. You’re lying.”  
    “For you,” Loki said. One of the two humans who heard him say that thought it had been a statement. The other man thought it had been a question.   
    “I’m guilty, and he’s lying!” Thor shouted this at everyone, and Loki laughed. He strolled toward the judge, smiled at him and smiled at the jury. “What will you opine, mortals?” He brushed hair away from his face, and spread his hands. “That Thor, your Avenger, would murder you? Or that I would decide to make him a weapon?”  
    The guard  
    “Mr. Laufeyson!” The judge asked, trying to shout over Thor’s contradictions as guards handcuffed the God of Lies. “Why did you confess this, and why aren’t you resisting arrest?”  
    Loki shrugged slightly, looking at his handcuffs as if they had jests written on them. “Why do you assume that I have motives?” 


	10. Chapter 10

_You_  
  
    “My brother would still be alive if he hadn’t bespelled us.” You stop short, hearing the angry voice from the other side of a wall in the half-finished house you’ve been helping to paint. The woman who will live here is too old to paint, and you have finished your chronicle. For now.  
    Another man sighs. “Thor says he was lying. I know not. He does spells and he lies; it was one or the other, this time.”  
    “It was a spell,” the first man says heavily. You hear one of them hammering, securing boards. “We’d never have acted like we did without it.”  
    The second man mumbles in agreement, and you slash the paint across the wall so hard that some of it flies onto your gown, a messy white line on the black fabric.  
    Three months since Loki went to take the blame. New Asgard abides in Jotunheimen National Park. Everyone is home. The Hulk is visiting, though he has become a mortal named Bruce Banner. Valkyrie and Thor are betrothed. Thor has almost stopped proclaiming that Loki did not enchant him, because nobody but you believes him.  
    And Loki is in prison for life, and you are waiting for him to escape.


	11. Chapter 11

_Loki_  
  
    White walls, lights that make no pretense of imitating sunlight.  
    If I leave too soon, the Midgardians may find a fragment of logic and suspect that I chose to be a decoy. I’ll wait long enough for normality to include Thor reigning over New Asgard and not to include my name and badly taken image in Midgardian news.   
    I’ll wait long enough to determine if Thor will visit me. A proven-innocent king with powerful friends—he can, if he so desires.  
    When he does, there is glass between us. The third time, or the fourth. It feels as if there has been such glass more frequently than that—either whole or broken. We have both bled from reaching through it.  
     “I know you aren’t guilty, brother,” he says before he’s even fully seated. I scrutinize his expression, and see that he entirely believes that I am not. Such sincerity and such guilt would not fit with doubt.   
    “A unique belief,” I say. I realize that I am tapping rhythmically on my leg and make myself stop doing so. “Are you here to…convince me of my innocence?”  
    He shakes his head. “I’m allowed to stay for a quarter hour. I can’t win an argument with you in fifteen minutes.”  
     “Or fifteen centuries.” He looks sad but well, as if despite a lack of happiness he has been eating and sleeping and acting in all the ways he ought to. A king is a good symbol for a realm, if he is a good king: Asgard must be in a determinedly heyday state. I will not ask. Let too much interest in our people or in him transpire, and the Midgardians may suspect me of innocence. “Why have you come?”   
    He leans close to the glass, knuckles pressing against it, and tries to whisper, speaking in Alfish—a wise choice; no mortals speak it. “Are you going to escape, or do you need rescued?”  
    “Rescuing me would endanger you and all of New Asgard,” I whisper in the same elegant language.   
    Thor shakes his head. “Do you need rescued, brother?”  
    It’s as if all the lights became a shade warmer. I touch my fist to the glass, on the other side from his, and smile. “Most certainly not.”    


	12. Chapter 12

_You_  
  
    “My lady,” Heimdall says pleasantly. You look up from the saga you are trying to read in the sunset light and smile at him. “Yes, Lord Heimdall?”  
    He takes a step closer, and says almost inaudibly, “You should expect your husband home soon.”   
    “Home? How—“  
    He gazes over your shoulder, eyes matching the light, and smiles with great amusement. “I’m watching him escape prison as we speak,” he says as if that was normal.“Pardon me, my lady, I must speak to  the king.”  
    He walks past you toward the palace, leaving you staring in the general direction of the prison from which Loki is escaping. He’s coming. He’s going to come!  
    You hurry  back towards the Ark and  to your room, where you lock the door and begin quickly packing a very small bag. You know he won’t be able to stay, so you must be ready to go with him.  
    You are packed, and you wait. Hours pass. The twilight turns dark and midnight comes and goes, and still you’re dressed and booted and sitting on your bed, a blanket wrapped around you, staring at the door and waiting. What if he was caught? Or doesn’t know where to find you? You swallow hard, blinking as your tired eyes see diminutive lights meander through the air between you and the unopening door.   
    “Did you miss me?”   
    Your heart thumps and you twist around, joy rushing through you. The window is open and Loki is sitting on the other edge of the bed, and that is all you see before he pulls you across it into his arms and holds you so closely that you can scarcely breathe. You wrap your arms around him and cling to him, burying your face against his shoulder. “Endlessly.”  
    His gentle fingers run through your hair. “I shall not return to Asgard for a hundred years,” he says softly, and lets go of you. “You have been Asgardian forever, my wife only—“  
    You look up at him sharply. “You think I’d want to stay here without you?” you blurt out. “Or anywhere without you? I—I was starting to think of begging the Midgardians to put me in prison with you.” You swallow hard, blinking away tears. “Would you rather leave alone?” you ask, praying that he would not.  
    He shakes his head, lips parted. “Never.”   
    “Then you shouldn’t frighten me by asking questions like that!” you exclaim, keeping your voice low. You let yourself collapse back onto the bed, and look up at him, reaching out to brush your hand over his leather-trousered knee. “You know I love you.”  
    Loki bends over you, leaning on one hand and tracing your collarbone with the other. “I dreamt that you blamed me,” he says, lines between his brows, and falls silent, sadness in every line of his face.   
     But he smiles as you reach up and pull him down on top of you, and you feel him relax as your arms wrap around him. “I never blame you for anything, my love,” you say, adding with a bit of a grin, “which makes for some very unconventional history in my Annals of Asgard!”   
    Loki laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and kisses the corner of your mouth. “Let’s put our mysterious disappearance from Midgard in the next chapter of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was partly inspired by portraitoftheoddity's post https://portraitoftheoddity.tumblr.com/post/167144153769/ok-but-imagine-thor-and-his-ship-of-asgardian.
> 
> My source for information about Jotunheimen National Park: https://www.google.com/destination?q=norway+national+parks&safe=active&client=firefox-b-1&site=search&output=search&dest_mid=/m/02n218&tpd=2018-01-25,2018-02-01&dest_mid=/m/05kvc4&tpd=2018-01-25,2018-02-01&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj0uv3z8MLYAhWF3YMKHWOTAasQ69EBCC8oAjAA


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